Let's Take it Back
by stingrae90
Summary: It seems, ever since he became one of the Avengers, that a mad scientist with a grudge shows up every six months or so, with a new and ever more complicated grand plan. Accompanied by even more complicated and bizarre machinery. And even when they don't work, they still have an effect...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **So this is mostly stress relief. And also wondering. Have fun reading it, I had fun writing it.

* * *

It wasn't often that Clint Barton found himself in the thick of any fight. He was most effective at long-range - where he could see everything without interference - or in single hand-to-hand combat - though Natasha always bested him in that category. So to say that he was displeased at being forced to ground by the crazy of the week was an understatement along the lines of calling the Hulk a big guy with a temper.

It was a good thing that R&D had long been in the habit of reinforcing his bow, given how often he'd had to use it as a blunt weapon lately. It could get depressing quickly, really. His bow was a modern mechanical marvel and it was being reduced to a glorified _club _because he couldn't get the distance to use it properly or to gain enough time to pull one of his guns.

"Seriously, what is _wrong_ with you people?" he growled over the comms, mostly at Stark and Banner - for once contributing in a scientific capacity in figuring out just _why_ someone wanted to turn adults into snivelling six year olds and not as a giant green rage monster - but also at the uncaring universe in general. "Any idea with hazardous materials or a lack of common sense and its suddenly the must do project of the year!"

"_Hey, I have never attempted to make a kid-ray. Ever_." Stark sounded almost personally offended. Bully for him. He got to fly around in his tin can, shooting the frankly creepy robots Dr. Who-Cares-What-His-Name-Is had created to go along with his kid-ray. Clint was stuck on the ground, surrounded by said creepy robots and fast loosing patience with _everything_. "_Who would want to? Being a kid was awful enough the first time through. Why do it ag-_"

"**Watch out!**" Rogers' voice broke into the conversation and Clint dove automatically to his right, taking advantage of a momentarily clear space in the robots around him, and rolling and coming up with an arrow knocked and ready to fire. It wasn't hard to figure out that the reason for Rogers' sudden warning was the fresh wave of robots converging fast on his location. He let the arrow fly, detonating the explosive head with a smirk as soon as it lodged in the ground in the middle of the advancing robot ranks. Overhead, Iron Man dodged sharply to his left, firing repulsor blasts over his shoulder as some of the robots around Clint who _hadn't_ been sufficiently warned off by the explosive end of their fellows _took flight_ to give chase.

This guy had obviously had too much time on his hands if he'd personalized some of the robots to go after specific Avengers. That was more worrying to Clint than the actual fact of a scientist crazy enough to build a kid-ray in the first place.

_"Hawkeye, report!"_

"I'm fine, Cap," Clint said, taking gleeful advantage of the fact that he had the _room_ to use his bow properly again. "The ranks thinned out, what with me blowing up about twenty of them and about a half dozen more taking off after Stark. Did we know they could fly?"

_"It doesn't seem to be all of them. Stark and Thor are taking the rest of them out now. Can you get up high? I need your eyes, we've lost sight of Dr. Boros."_

Clint surveyed his last opponents and grinned. "Give me five minutes to get clear of the last of the reject pile and I'll see if I can't locate Dr. Crazy."

_"I've got the robots. Go, Hawkeye,_" Natasha's voice echoed in his ear at the same moment as the woman herself dropped on top of one of the robots, almost gleefully shorting out its circuits with her bracelets.

"Gone," he replied, and started making his way up the nearest fire escape. "Cap, what's the last known for Dr. Crazy?"

_"Dr. Boros."_

"Man invented a ray gun that turns people into six year olds. He invented a _kid ray_," Clint returned, using a window and the roof's ledge to pull himself up the rest of the way to the top of the building. "He is Dr. Crazy."

Rogers stifled a laugh, Clint could _hear it_ in the man's voice. _"He was on the fire escape of a building three blocks down from your current location, but Thor took out his perch. Once the dust cleared, he was gone."_

Clint didn't bother stifling his sigh. "Let me guess, there's a new hole in the building that the planners didn't put there."

_"I don't think Agent Coulson is going to be happy about our damage report, no."_

With a roll of his eyes, Clint started a slow jog to right, scanning the streets and rooftops around him as he went. "You realize he could have just gone down through the handy new entrance and disappeared at street level? He's had how much of a head start?"

_"We have to try."_

Empty roof, empty roof, debris ridden roof - courtesy of Thor, given the smoking remains of the robots - debris ridden streets, some petrified civilians taking advantage of a lull in the battle to get the hell out of Dodge...

"I'm trying," he told Rogers, "but I don't think our man is still on site. I'm making my way to where you saw him last, but he's had at least, what, five minutes? Even for a civilian, that's plenty of time to get lost in the chaos around here."

_"Just concentrate on the immediate area, Hawkeye. Thor and Iron Man have the perimiter. If he's still here, we'll have him boxed in."_

Clint wanted to believe that, but the guy had a habit of zapping his opponents with his kid ray. He'd already left a trail of hysterical six-year-olds wailing for Mommy in his wake. Hysterical six-year-olds that _used_ to be competent members of SHIELD and New York's finest. He was not very optimistic about their chances of stopping him if they didn't get that weapon _away_ from him first.

Pausing on another debris ridden rooftop, Clint whistled silently. There was a vaguely Thor-shaped hole in the brickwork of the building opposite him, but it had managed to avoid both windows and somehow the fire escape was still intact.

Apparently the lectures about unneccesary damage were having _some_ effect on Thor, even if it didn't look like it to an untrained eye.

And more targeted damage or not, there was no way the guy was still in that building. Subtle Thor might not be, but he _was_ thorough. And anything he might have missed, Iron Man's sensor's should have picked up. So the next logical step for Clint would be to try to track their missing mad scientist's escape route. Radioing Cap to let him know what was going on, Clint picked the most likely direction - towards the nearest strip mall, crowds were always good for disappearing in - and set off.

* * *

"I'm telling you guys, this guy did not get past us. He's still inside the perimeter," Tony groused as he flew a lazy curve to retrace his most recent path. "JARVIS has SHIELD's surveillance feeds as well as my own, there's like five thousand ways for us to keep track of the people going in and out of the perimeter, not to mention the giant line of NYPD and SHIELD agents with riot shields "

_"Then why haven't we found him yet?" _

"Because he's sneaky, as well as a mad scientist genius type. Don't worry, Cap," Tony said, "I'm still smarter. He's not getting away."

_"Guys, I have a visual on our_ _target,"_ Hawkeye's voice come over the comms, effectively silencing everyone else. _"Two blocks inside the perimeter, west side, on the next roof. He's fiddling with the kid ray; looks like Thor might have damaged it when he knocked a new entrance into that building."_

_"Be careful, Hawkeye. We're heading your way."_

_"No need, Cap. I'll just tranq him from here. SHIELD can take him from there."_

Before anything else could be said, a loud _BANG_ resounded through the streets and and through the comm system. Tony yelped, swatting at his ears, even though he knew that wouldn't do any good, momentarily disrupting his balance in the air. When he regained it, he swung sharply to the west and gunned his thrusters.

"Birdbrain, you had better not have been in the center of that explosion!" he snarled. There was no response. "Jarvis, status update on Hawkeye!"

_"Hawkeye, report!" _Roger's demanded over the comm, sounding ever so slightly out of breath. Tony knew he had to be running for their teammate's last known position

_"Sir, I am unable to get a response from Agent Barton's tracker. It appeares to have been damaged in the blast."_

__"Dammit!"

When Iron Man landed on the roof where he spotted a collapsed form in a black and dark purple combat uniform, he could see the reason for the non-response from their archer. The explosion they had heard was apparently the kid ray deciding enough was enough and _exploding_, knocking both Dr. Boros and Clint down, both apparently unconscious.

A quick scan showed neither was likely to wake up just yet, so Tony went to Clint first, very, very grateful that the ray didn't seem to have had an effect on the other man, despite obviously going off with enough force to knock him out. A hysterical six-year-old Clint was not something Tony wanted to deal with.

"I've got Hawkeye," he reported. "He's unconscious, but still adult, so apparently whatever Thor did, it turned off the kid-ify portion of the ray."

_"I'm not sure that's actually possible, Tony," _Bruce said. "_The readings we've gotten off of it don't seem to be particularly stable in the first place. Making it more unstable shouldn't affect it that way."_

__"Well, it did. I'm right here. No baby Hawkeye."

Pounding footsteps preceded Roger's entrance to the roof, breathing slightly more heavily than normal, but not much. Tony waved him over and then took off for the next roof, pulling out restraints as he did so. He was going to have _fun_ playing with that ray gun.

* * *

Clint groaned slightly as he swam back towards consciousness. What had _hit_ him? He couldn't remember taking a job recently, he shouldn't have been in a fight and he always tried to take out his marks from a distance anyway, so what...?

There was another person kneeling by him. Clint forced himself to stay limp, hoping his small groan had gone unnoticed. _Stupid, stupid!_ Don't make noise if you don't know where you are or who's around!

"Barton?"

Well, shit. The person had heard, and apparently knew his name. Only Clint didn't recognize the voice.

The only people who knew his name were either back in the circus, or those annoying SHIELD agents that had been sniffing around his jobs recently. Not recognizing the voice made the vote overwhelmingly in SHIELD's favor.

Double shit.

"Nrgh," he groaned again, purposely playing up his headache to buy some more time. One good thing about SHIELD. They didn't seem to want him permanently damaged, even if they _did_ want to bring him in. If he could buy enough time to figure out how many others were with the new agent, he could probably put enough distance between him and this place before they reorganized from the chaos he was going to leave in his wake.

"Hold still. That explosion knocked you out for a couple minutes. You might have a concussion. Is there anything broken you can feel?"

Explosion? SHIELD had resorted to using explosions to slow him down? And he thought their other attempts were stupidily risky...

"Not...not a good idea," he muttered, feeling his limbs respond as he shifted them experimentally. He could feel his weapons, although he didn't remember putting a knife _there_ and the quiver he was laying half on was off somehow. He could worry about that later. They hadn't disarmed him. That was going to be a mistake. "I'don think...broke anythin'."

"That's good. Take it easy." There was a pause and then a confused. "What wasn't a good idea?"

"Ex'losions," he grumbled, curling slightly in on himself. A hand landed on his shoulder, steadying him, and Clint barely managed not to flinch away.

"Well, I doubt Dr. Boros is going to be able to use that gun again, so we won't have to worry about it."

A gun? What the hell? A gun exploded and knocked him out?

Who the hell was Dr. Boros anyway?

He slitted his eyes open and then forgot about even pretending to be more out of it than he was, because CAPTAIN AMERICA was kneeling next to him, cowl pushed back to reveal a young face with determined blue eyes and a square jawline. The shield lay within easy reach to his right.

"Barton?" The eyes turned worried. Clint shook his head, laughing a bit despite himself.

"I gotta give you guys credit. When you get an idea in your head, you throw out all the stops."

He'd confused the Captain America look-alike, he can tell. Good. That'll gain him a few more seconds. He's on a roof that obviously had taken damage even before the explosion that had knocked him out. (_What the hell kind of gun was that? That explosion is too large for anything short of a rocket launcher!)_  
There's a fire escape five feet to his left. If he can get to that, he can be down and disappearing in a crowd before anyone knows where exactly he's gone.

_"Captain, I've been analyzing the readings we got off of that blast, I think it still did have an effect. It's throwing off the same signatures, just in lesser quantities."_

__Clint started, one hand going to his right ear. A earbud so well-fitted he hadn't even noticed it was there resided just inside the canal. Captain America obviously had a similar one, because one hand reached up to his right ear and he nodded.

"Alright, but it doesn't seem to have had a visible effect. What else could it do? Was it maybe too weak to affect anyone?"

The Captain turned away slightly, bending to reach for his shield, and Clint took the best opportunity he was going to get. Before the costumed agent could get turned back around properly, Clint was over the side of the building and halfway down, earbud discarded on the roof. He thought he heard thrusters for a moment but this was the middle of a city, and it was far too faint to be a plane anyway.

His feet hit the ground and took him fifteen seconds to find the best escape route. With a feral grin, he ducked his head and ran.

There was a reason SHIELD couldn't catch him. And he had a streak to maintain.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve wasn't quite sure what happened. One moment he was turning to grab his shield, conferring with Bruce about what the lessened impact of the kid ray might be, Barton a still, quiet form still mostly prone on the roof in front of him. The next moment, the archer was just _gone_ and his comm was bouncing slightly on the ground as it rolled, discarded, and Steve had to resist the urge to curse.

How long was it going to take him before he finally learned not to assume everything was okay until the battle was over and everyone had been through Medical? They must have missed something, he didn't know what, but they _had to have_ -

"Iron Man, scanners! Hawkeye's gone after something!"

_"Why not ask Legolas himself, Capt?"_ But Iron Man is taking flight anyway, steering himself with his feet and one hand, the other holding the kid ray protectively to his chest plate.

"He left his comm behind."

"_What?"_

__"I'm not saying it makes sense," Steve said, absently running through everything Barton had said since he woke up to try to find what he had missed. It must be something Hawkeye had seen before he'd been knocked out, because nothing after he woke should have provoked such a reaction out of the SHIELD agent. "Was there anything else in this area when that gun went off? Maybe he saw something right before, didn't have time to tell us."

_"And didn't say anything when he woke up? And why get rid of the_ _comm?_"

__Steve growled a bit with frustration as he made his own way down the fire escape Hawkeye must have almost slid down, he'd disappeared so fast. "I don't know, Stark. But we need to find him. If he's disoriented, or he did go after something-"

_"Agent Barton wouldn't have left the comm behind, though,_" Agent Coulson's voice was calm but tightly controlled. _"There's something else going on. Dr. Banner, what effects would a lessened blast of the radiation from that ray gun have?"_

_"I'm not an expert with this type of radiation. All I have to go on are speculations and a very rough hypothosis."_

_"It's more than we have now."_

_"And there's nothing here that should have made him run," _Stark pointed out. _"It was just him and Dr. Crazy over there."_

"So, what's going on?" Steve demanded. "_Did_ the gun do something?"

"_My hypothosis, really more of a guess, is that the level of radiation is directly linked to the age difference the ray gun produces," _Banner offered, slightly hesistant, but gamely pushing on anyway. "_There is a slight but noticable difference in some of the previous shots. Like I said earlier, that gun has been unstable all along. I don't know how he managed to keep it from blowing up as long as he did. The higher concentrations of radiation resulted in a...younger subject than lesser concentrations did."_

__Steve suddenly remembered Barton's surprise upon seeing him when he opened his eyes. _"I gotta give you guys credit. When you get an idea in your head, you throw out all the stops."_

"And it was still throwing radiation when it exploded. So Hawkeye _was_ effected," he summarized.

"_I believe he was, yes."_

__Steve swallowed, nervous. He didn't know much about Barton's past, just the brief overview that had been included in the file SHIELD had given him access to. Steve didn't even bother trying to pretend that had anything even close to all the information in it. The holes in the narrative had been obvious, especially after he'd gotten to know the SHIELD agent. The holes had started to look a lot more deliberate than just SHIELD being cautious about how much they let the super soldier they still weren't sure of know about one of their assests. Getting to know the man in the months since the Chitauri invasion only made it more obvious that there was still a lot Steve didn't know about his teammate.

_"How many years do you estimate Agent Barton has lost?"_

__"It's before he joined SHIELD," Steve answered before he could think about it too hard. It felt _right._ "He hid it well, but I don't think he recognized _me_, just the costume. And he didn't try to contact anyone he knows at SHIELD for confirmation that I wasn't some nut job."

_"I'd estimate he could have lost up to ten years. But it's only a guess."_

_"One that the Captain's report supports, though. Agent Barton was recruited eight years ago. If he's lost at least that much time, his first response would be to get rid of anything that could be used to track him, and run."_

__"Has he made it past the perimeter?"

Agent Coulson's voice was wry. _"Captain, none of the agents on the perimeter are going to be able to stop him, even if they _do_ see him. There is a reason we recruited him in the first place. Agent Romanov?"_

_"Already on my way. When I find something, you'll know."_

__Steve didn't kid himself. The Black Widow was Hawkeye's partner, and far more able to find the man than he was. He took a deep breath and made himself focus on other concerns. "One of us will be on call until you find him," he said into the comm, with a calm he didn't feel. "Iron Man, you've got first watch. I'll take Dr. Boros in and then relieve you."

_"Acknowledged,_" was the curt response from the red-haired woman, and then her comm went silent.

* * *

Clint curled closer into the crawlspace he'd found, in the basement of an apartment building that had _definitely _seen better days, and used the flashlight he'd found in one of the many pockets in this strange tactical get up he was wearing to inspect the rest of the equipment he had on him.

"What the _hell_...?" he muttered. This bow was nothing like his own. He had no idea where it had come from and whoever had managed to design a bow that _collapsed in on itself_ must be making a freaking fortune on it. The interchangeable arrowheads were almost expected after he'd discovered that the bow was collapsable. "This has _got_ to cost a fortune," he muttered to himself.

There was no way he had managed to buy this for himself, and stealing this kind of tech from whoever had made it would have been a risk too great to take. So how had he _gotten_ this?

The two new knives stashed in sheaths on his thighs were strange, oddly expensive too, but at least he still had his old standby in a sheath tucked into his right boot. It was a small comfort that not _everything_ had changed between his last coherent memory and waking on that rooftop with _Captain freaking America._

But not enough of one to make him relax. Everything else _had_ changed, right down to his clothes, which felt oddly loose around his frame. Not enough to be inconvenient, but enough to be distracting. Well, in addition to the fact that his clothes weren't _his_ clothes, and he was not going to freak out about someone changing his clothes on him while he was unconscious.

He'd get revenge for that later. Once he knew who had done this to him.

Almost reluctantly putting the bow aside, he examined the two sidearms he'd also found on his person. They looked normal, unlike the bow, and both still had full clips when he checked them. Which yeah, if he had a choice, he was _always_ gonna use a bow, so nice touch by SHIELD, but the fact remained.

_Why_ had they given him so many weapons? What had been the point of doing any of this? It certainly wasn't convincing him they were the better option than selling his services on the open market. His jobs right now sucked, yeah, but he got to _choose_ them, to a point. He'd had enough of people ordering him around in his life. He didn't need the government doing it too.

He was going to be sorry to have to ditch the bow, but it was far too distinctive to carry around, even collapsed. It might even have some sort of tracker imbedded in it and he probably should have left it on the roof but he'd never been able to just _discard_ a bow like that. Especially not one this...nice.

"Maybe should have kept that ear piece a bit longer," he mused quietly. It'd be good if he knew just what SHIELD was doing to try to track him. Presumably they were either unaware of where he was or they were trying to wait him out. Before today, he'd have placed good money on "unaware of where he was" but since they'd managed to get the drop on him so badly earlier today...

How _had_ they done that, anyway? He'd been sure he'd gotten away clean in London. They couldn't have tracked him from there. Not possible.

Spinning one of the new knives around absently, Clint stared at the wall opposite him, and tried to think of what his next move should be. He'd have to find new clothes and ditch most of these weapons, who knew what kind of tracking devices were on them. And he'd have to do it fast, he was already pushing the limit of how long was safe to stay in one spot now that he'd been compromised.

If SHIELD was going to try to appeal to some non-existent patriotic desire to serve his country, they were obviously more cracked than he'd thought at first. That made them dangerous.

More dangerous, anyway.

So he'd just have to be extra cautious and even more dangerous than they were. A smile crept onto his face as a plan started to form.

* * *

Tony wasn't sure if he should be impressed or horrified that their missing Avenger was so good at avoiding ALL of his scans and detection devices. It was frankly annoying.

"Since when did he become an expert at avoiding my tech?" he groused, glaring at the holographic display in front of him. Colored lines streaked in every likely direction and more of them than not were completely impossible to verify. Not without Romanov's report. And since she hadn't returned yet to _give_ one and wouldn't answer him when he tried her comm beyond a terse _"Not now, Stark, I'm working." _, well. He was reduced to grumbling at his bots. "And shouldn't it be _easier_ to catch a younger Barton? I mean, he had to have been less of a badass ten years ago, right?"

"You're assuming that he learned most of what he knows from SHIELD."

Tony didn't bother jumping these days when one of his teammates snuck up on him. He'd long given up the fight about _security_ and _staying out of his space_. Besides, if he jumped _everytime_ one of the SHIELD triplets got the drop on him, he'd never do anything else.

Sometimes, he swore they had a competition going. He'd be positive if he could ever catch Coulson _smiling_ about it. He knew it amused the assassin duo. JARVIS was still working on capturing video footage of Coulson's reaction though.

"So where did he learn? You telling me he learned all those spy skills from that circus he jokes about sometimes?"

Agent Coulson gave him a singularly unimpressed look. "That is a very poor attempt to make me believe you haven't hacked his file again to find his recruitment information."

Tony glared. "And that is a poor attempt to get me to believe you didn't redact the hell out of it the moment you knew Barton was compromised and I'd go looking."

"Can we not do this right now?" Steve's irritated voice broke their staring contest. "We're missing a teammate. This really isn't appropriate."

Coulson's eyebrow twitched. Tony hoped JARVIS had gotten that. "Of course, Captain."

"What do we know?" Steve asked as he came farther into the lab, still in his field suit. "Thor's on call for Agent Romanov. She hadn't found anything concrete by the time I left."

Tony grunted annoyance. Of _course_ she answered Steve when _he_ asked for updates. "She eliminate anything? I've got about fifty viable possibilities and nothing much to go on. Because no one is _talking._"

"East, she said."

Tony stared at his holographic projection. "JARVIS, do I even wanna know how many potential hidey-holes are to the east of his last known?"

"_Unlikely sir. Shall I compile a list anyway?"_

__Tony sighed. His life sucked. "Yeah, pull it up. Purple is still most likely. Mark it, J-man."

The hologram faded and then spun back into existence, concentrated more tightly on the series of old apartment buildings and occasional warehouse that made up the section of town Barton had disappeared into.

There were far too many purple lines and dots.

"This is gonna take a while."

Steve sighed. "I'll get the coffee."

There was a reason Steve was everyone's favorite. Tony forgot that sometimes.  
And then he brought _coffee._

* * *

Natasha gritted her teeth in frustration as she finally made it into the crawlspace of the apartment building she'd targeted. If the difficulty of even _getting in here_ was any indication, it was a perfect hide away for her missing partner.

Assuming he hadn't employed different evasion tactics before he'd been recruited. But nothing she knew of him indicated that those were not long standing habits, picked up long before SHIELD had taken him in.

The play of her flashlight caught on a matte shine. She paused, heart in her throat and then grinned.

There was a pile of discarded weaponry on the floor of this crawlspace. The bow, collapsed in on itself and stashed neatly in a corner, the quiver complete with arrow shafts, and one of the knives she knew Barton carried in a thigh sheath. She would bet the quiver was missing some of the specialty arrowheads.

Even if instinct had made him ditch the items most likely to have tracking devices in them, the novelty of some of those specialty heads would have made him take at least one. Sticking a bug on one of those, after all, wasn't very efficient and very unlikely.

She had a starting point now. She'd been following the right path. All she had to do now was extrapolate from this new data to find out exatly where he'd gone and they would be one step closer to bringing him back in.

Gathering the discarded weapons - he'd want them back once he was returned to normal, that was a given - Natasha backed out of the crawl space and started to reach up to her ear to trigger her comm unit. _Now_ she had an answer for Stark that was useful.

"Don't move."

The voice made her freeze more than the command did. Flicking her eyes to her right caught Clint Barton's sillohuete in the faint light of fading day, just at the edge of her peripheral vision.

He hadn't discarded the guns. She had no doubt one was trained on her head.

"Who are you?"

This was going to be...delicate. She should have paid more attention to the possibility of a trap. It had been foolish to assume he wouldn't hurt her because they were partners. He didn't remember that, didn't remember her.

"SHIELD agent Natasha Romanov," she answered, steady and calm, not moving an inch, her thoughts safely concealed behind a placid exterior.

"And what do you want with me, Agent Romanov?"

She had one chance, to bring him in peacefully and without conflict that would end up with the both of them in the infirmary. Natasha shoved down the brutal sense of irony at their semi-reversed positions and chose her words carefully.

"I want to give you the answers you are looking for."


	3. Chapter 3

Clint kept the scoff that wanted to come out mostly contained behind his teeth. A small huff still escaped, but he could allow that much of a reaction. The red-haired woman who had tracked him down - Agent Romanov - had her hands full with the collapsed bow, the quiver slung over one shoulder and he was sure she'd added the one knife he'd discarded to the collection he could spot dotted around her person. From the way she'd been reaching for her ear when he got the drop on her, there was every possibility she had another one of the comms that he'd discarded on the roof.

He couldn't stay here long. He needed to get her talking, and then disappear again. Whether or not he had to kill her depended entirely on how stubborn she was planning on being about following him.

He really hoped she didn't decide to be stubborn. Killing might be his living, but he preferred not to add to his body count outside of jobs if at all possible.

"And what questions do you think I want the answers to, Agent Romanov?" He kept his voice distant and skeptical. Let her fill the majority of their conversation. More opportunity to slip up and tell him something actually _useful_ that way.

She hadn't turned since he'd told her to not move, and her arms stayed carefully away from her body, in plain view and away from any weapons. He wanted to be able to see her face - he could judge her sincerity much better if he could see her expressions head on - but he didn't want to lose the advantage he had. If she'd managed to track him this quickly, he didn't doubt she could turn the tables on him given the slightest opportunity.

He couldn't give her one.

"How you arrived on that rooftop, for a start," she answered, still calm and unmoving. "Who was wearing the Captain America uniform, for another. Do you want me to go on?"

Those were hardly difficult to guess. He let his scorn be clearly heard in his voice. "You're two for two, Agent. Care to go for three?"

She didn't rise to his baiting. Shame.

"Where you went wrong, that SHIELD was able to track you and get the drop on you."

He couldn't quite help the twitch her words caused, and was glad she wasn't facing him. Hopefully her peripheral vision wasn't as good as his.

"I can answer that one now. SHIELD did not succeed in tracking you. I'm the only one who knows your exact whereabouts at this moment."

"And I should believe you why? What's stopping me from just putting a bullet in your brain and leaving before your backup arrives?"

He thought he could see her shoulders tense up slightly, but with the fading light, it was difficult to be certain. He let the silence drag on, the threat hanging heavy in the air.

"Let me propose a compromise," she finally said, calm still saturating her voice. "I won't ask you to come in, and I will not tell my team where you are. You can walk away from here, without me following you, and I will make sure no one else does."

When she went silent, Clint tried very hard not to be the first to break it, but his curiosity was _killing_ him. Hopefully it wouldn't be literal.

"And in return I do what?"

"Find a newsstand, or an online calendar. Look for the date, and the major news story for today."

Clint stared hard at the side of Romanov's head, baffled. _What the hell?_

"That's a...unique offer," he finally said, keeping his own voice level with effort. "I ask again, why should I trust you?"

"Because I am also going to leave you with a way to contact us."

..._what the _HELL?

"You'll have to excuse me if I call bullshit."

She was smiling, he knew she was. He didn't know _why_ unless she just enjoyed messing with people's heads. A gun pointed at her head, by someone she had to know wouldn't hesitate to use it if he had too, by someone who could have already _shot her dead_, and she was _smiling -_

"I trust you, Barton," she said, calm as she had been through this whole conversation. "After you look up the news, hopefully you will see why." Her head tilted ever so slightly. "May I put your weapons down?"

Oh, she was _good_. Clint forcefully pulled his attention back on point. He could marvel at her balls later. "Why?"

"I'd like to hold up my side of the bargain. To contact myself or a member of my team isn't exactly easy. We're none of us in the phone book. I have a spare cell phone with me. It's yours if you decide to take my deal."

Narrowing his eyes, Clint made a snap decision. "Put them down carefully. And yours go with them. No reaching into pockets just yet."

That might have been a sigh, but then she was moving, very slowly and carefully, and he devoted his attention to looking for any tricks she might try to pull. Just because she was good didn't mean he wasn't _better, _and he'd always been excellent at improving a plan at a moment's notice.

This wasn't turning out to be a _complete_ waste of a day, after all.

* * *

Natasha didn't let herself slump in relief; this was far from over. But a small sigh escaped her, nonetheless. If he was willing to let her at least start the motions of her proposed plan, then the chances of him actually coming in on his own were increasing. She wasn't going to delude herself that there was some latent part of her partner lingering in his younger self, but it was a bit hard. He sounded so much like _himself_ when he'd "called bullshit" on her plan. She hadn't been able to help her smile. It had been all she could do not to laugh. Of course he was _himself_, but he'd sounded like her _partner_ in that moment. Sardonically poking holes in flimsy and ill-thought-out plans.

Her plan might not be flimsy or ill-thought-out but it _was_ hastily formed. She would give him that much.

Cautiously, she knelt on the street, easing the bow to the ground and slipping the quiver off to lean against it. She placed his knife on the ground next to them, and then held her hands away from her body. Disarming _herself_ was going to be a bit riskier. She didn't _like_ being unarmed, but it would put Clint more at ease to think he had her at more of a disadvantage. It wasn't like she would be defenseless. They had ample proof she was the better hand-to-hand fighter.

It still didn't ease the part of her mind that was screaming about willingly giving up weapons and the kind of idiots who would do that.

"I have two guns in thigh holsters, and five knives on my person." She said, ruthlessly throttling those thoughts. They had no use here. "My bracelets are also weapons. Which do you want me to take off first?"

She still hadn't turned to look at him, but she could feel his narrowed gaze on the side of her head. "Guns first, then the knives, starting with that one in the small of your back."

"Alright," she acquiesced, moving just one hand to her first gun, slipping it out of the holster. "I'm going to put the safety on the guns as I take them off. Is that okay?"

"Fine." It was clipped, but not nervous. Natasha secured each gun before she laid it on the ground next to her partner's weapons and then held her hands out to the side again. "You're very calm."

"I told you, I trust you."

That was confusing him, she knew. It had confused her, too, the first time he had told her the same.

_"Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, Nat. I trust you, so they can all shut up about it."_

Maybe she was being stupid for trusting him, this younger version of him, but...the man that had seen something worth saving - worth defying orders from the WSC itself - in her...that man had been forged long before he'd met her. In his own version of a personal hell, that he'd spent far too long convincing himself was exactly where he wanted to be, until a newly minted handler had extended a lifeline to him, and dragged him to shore.

She was betting her life on the fact that the ray gun had not regressed him to a point where he _wasn't_ looking for that lifeline. But nothing he'd done so far convinced her otherwise. It was subtle, but she dealt in subtle daily.

Natasha had removed each of her knives as she thought, and held her hands carefully away from her body once again, waiting for direction.

"Now the bracelets," came her partner's voice. She nodded and talked him through the process for disarming the Bites and setting them aside. She didn't want him to shoot her when they flared blue before going dark again. As soon as she had placed her last physical weapon on the ground, his voice came again. "Now, stand up and walk backwards, slowly. Keep your hands up."

She did as he asked, moving smoothly until he told her to stop again, precisely ten feet from the pile of weapons. Carefully keeping outside of her reach, he paced around in front of her, the gun always level with her head. Natasha had to hold in a startled breath.

She could see why no one had seen the difference between Clint de-aged and Clint as he should be. The differences were slight. He was slightly less broad in the shoulders and arms, a few of the faint scars on his hands and around his neck were missing and - most telling to her - his gaze was harder than she had ever seen it, except for when he spoke of Loki.

Nothing that Rogers or Stark would know to look for. For all they were a team, they were still _new_, finding each others' quirks and habits more by mistake and trial and error than any concerted effort.

"Alright, slowly now, right hand only, open your pocket."

Reaching down across her body, she slipped the button that kept the pocket closed and slowly pulled up the flap, pressing it against her leg to keep it open. She didn't try to reach into her pocket.

"You can get it out." The gun never shifted, aimed squarely between her eyes, but she could almost _see_ the settling of his stance. "You pull out anything but a cell phone, I will shoot you."

"Understood," she told him, and just as slowly as she had opened it, she reached into the pocket and pulled out the spare phone. It had taken her time to retrieve it, more to program her number and Rogers' into it, time she hadn't been sure she had to spare, but it was proving to be more than worth it now. When she had it, she held it out on her upturned palm, steady and unwavering.

Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, pounding out the rhythm of her nerves while she was unable to do anything else to relieve the tension. Clint's blue eyes - almost a slate gray in this light - narrowed ever so slightly.

"That's it?" he asked, skepticism in his voice just as it was in his expression. This was the oldest model phone she could find on short notice, and it was still at least five years ahead of what he likely remembered. She couldn't tell if he was more skeptical of the cell phone or her plan. It was likely an even race between the two.

"There's no tracer on it, and it's already got my number and my team leader's programmed into it."

Clint smirked at her, a slow widening of his mouth that only an idiot would call a grin, and Natasha suddenly wondered just how much her partner and Coulson were actually _joking_ when they talked about Clint being the trial run for her recruitment into SHIELD.

* * *

It had been a long time since Thor Odinson had stood watch while a comrade ventured into danger on their own. Even longer since he had been required to sit on the sidelines while one of his team went after another in danger.

But the Widow knew her partner best. His aid was needed more in providing her with a safety net should anything else go wrong. Sighing slightly, he landed on the rooftop where last they had seen Hawkeye, taking note of the slight damage the roof's edge had taken from the explosion. Surveying the surrounding buildings with a frown, he bent his own mind to the task of trying to predict his battle companion.

He might not know the archer best, but he had much more tactical experience in battle and war than any of his comrades, though the Captain came closer than the others. There were certain things that would translate to any situation.

From Hawkeye's perspective, he was suddenly displaced, in clothing not his own and with weapons that might be familiar but likely were not his own either, waking in the presence of a legend of his people. Nothing was familiar, so he would move to find that which _was_ familiar to him.

Widow had gone east, after some best guess at Hawkeye's movements that she had not further explained. If he continued from there, what would seem familiar to the deaged version of the archer? He favored high places and positions that gave him a hidden, secure place from which to plan his attacks.

He didn't have the required knowledge of this place to judge where to go. With a sigh, he spun Mjolnir, gathering the energy to take flight once more.

He would follow the Widow's path, and see if he could provide her an alternate pair of eyes in the sky. Thor had been flying for barely five minutes when he heard a sharp retort, now familiar as gun-fire, and he veered to the right to find the location of the commotion.

As he angled down for his landing, he caught a glimpse of red ducking into a weathered doorway and what might have been black and purple disappearing around a corner. There was a pile of weapons in the center of the street that he recognized as belonging to both SHIELD agents. The mystery of why they were so discarded would have to wait. The Asgardian prince glanced left and right at where both his teammates had likely gone and ground his teeth in frustration. Hawkeye was likely already gone, and Thor did not have the knowledge needed to track him. He could do nothing there.

"Is all well, Lady Widow?" he demanded, alert and tense. Hawkeye did _not_ know them right now. If he had hurt his battle companion, the man would not be pleased when he recovered.

"I'm fine, Thor," the woman answered him, coming back out of the building she'd sheltered in. Her hair was disordered and dust littered her uniform, but no wounds were visible from where he stood. Either she had been the shooter, or Hawkeye had _missed._

He found both equally hard to believe.

"And Hawkeye?"

A slow smile greeted him as the Black Widow retrieved her weapons. "He's got a lot to think about. Give him a few hours. Right now, I need to talk to Coulson."

* * *

They had managed to narrow down the list of possibilities from _oh-god-where-do-we-even-start _to _maybe-we-won't-die-before-figuring-this-out_ when the call came in.

"I'm telling you, I don't care _how_ uninjured he is, he's not getting in there. It's like...too small even for Romanov to get in there, and last I checked he's not _actually_ double-jointed, however good an impression he does when he's being a not-so-reformed circus boy, so there is no way-"

"I've learned not to call things impossible just because it hasn't been done before. What's to say he didn't...break a beam to enlarge the space or-"

"Cap, I'm _telling_ you, he did not go in there. It's disqualified based on _physics. _You can't break the laws of physics. Doesn't work."

"And the kid-ray doesn't already break them? _I_ don't break them?"

"Pfft. Those work on laws we don't fully understand yet; it's not _breaking_, it's _pushing forward_, new uses of old concepts, discovering new boundaries-"

"That doesn't make a bit of sense, Stark-"

"_Gentlemen, I believe you will want to hear this. There has been an incident in Agent Romanov's mission."_

Tony paused mid-gesture and closed his eyes. "JARVIS, there are not words for how much I did not want to hear those words."

The faint huff of a snort to his side indicated Rogers' reaction. "What happened, JARVIS? Is she okay?"

"_I'm fine, Captain," _the SHIELD agent's voice came over the comm instead. "_I made contact. Is Coulson with you?"_

"Made contact, she says," Tony grumbled. "As in you had him, and now do not? Why'd you let him get away? You think we need more issues?"

_"He's not a stray puppy, Stark."_

_"If I may, Agent Romanov, I have Agent Coulson on the Avengers' channel for you now."_

"Why is it Agent Agent you need anyway? I mean, I've got the fancy tracking equipment, and I thought we'd already established that SHIELD barely managed to bring him in the first time."

_"But we did bring him in, Stark,"_ Coulson's voice echoed slightly over the speakers. _"What's our situation?"_

_"I never realized the two of you were _serious_ about Barton being the trial run for my recruitment to SHIELD."_

Tony shot a look at the man standing next to him, eyebrows raised. Rogers shrugged, no more informed than the billionaire.

_"What did he do?" _And of course Coulson just sounded amused, like that was to be _expected._

_"Clubbed me with the butt of his gun, attempted to use one of my Bites on me, shot in my general direction and disappeared with the spare cell phone." _

Tony snorted and Rogers raised his eyebrows this time. "And what else?" the captain asked. "That's not enough for you to lose him."

_"What made you think my objective was to catch him in the first place? He's good enough not to be brought in without bloodshed unless he _chooses_ to come in. Do you really want to deal with the headlines if we're caught fighting on camera?"_

Tony winced and Rogers made a frustrated, futile fist. That was a very valid point.

_"That's not the point, though. The cell phone I let him take has my number and yours, Captain, preprogrammed in. He should be looking for the nearest newsstand in the next few hours. We need to be ready for when he does."_

_"Do you have a better idea on how far he's regressed?" _Coulson asked, smooth and unruffled. Tony envied the man his calm.

_"Definitely pre-SHIELD, but I'm estimating by no more than a year. He didn't try to kill me to get away, just distracted me long enough to get clear."_

_"That's good work, Agent Romanov."_

_"Thor and I are coming back in now."_

Tony sighed as the conversation flowed around him. Coulson coordinating and Romanov still giving rough theories as to her partner's mind set.

There were times he really hated not having the whole picture, but he wasn't sure he _wanted_ the one the SHIELD agents were discussing. How was shooting at someone just a distraction, not intent to seriously injure at the _very least?_

* * *

**A/N:** I am not including C:TWS in this story, because this is for fun and stress-relief, and the movie was wonderful and a lot of things, but STRESS-RELIEVING IT WAS NOT. Hope you enjoyed!


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